Great Gray Owl - 1

Title

Great Gray Owl - 1

Artist

Robert McAlpine

Medium

Photograph

Description

Portrait of a Great Gray Owl (Strix nebulosa). Great Grays live in the boreal woods where they rarely encounter humans. Every few years when the native rodent populations decline, some Great Grays come South in search of better hunting. This particular owl came to the Ottawa region where it was photographed.

THE STORY BEHIND THE PICTURE - During the winter of 2008/ 2009 several Great Gray Owls were living in the Western suburbs of Ottawa and they were a great hit of photographers. I arrived in the area late afternoon near the end of March, and saw this particular owl sitting on a fence post. I very slowly walked up to it and it just sat there looking at me. I got close enough for the owl to fill my frame (no cropping of this image), and I calmly took several pictures and backed away with the owl just sitting there completely unperturbed by my presence. The Camera I used was a Nikon D200 DX (cropped sensor) camera. Settings were ISO 200, FL 400 mm, aperture f/5.6, shutter speed 1/60 sec and using a Nikon fill flash mounted on the camera to bring out the blues in the features. In subsequent encounters with owls, I never again used a flash when filming owls since some people have suggested it might affect their eyes. This owl, however showed no reaction to the flash (which was only set to a fill level), so I am sure it did not cause it any harm. .

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Contest - "Birds Eye View Photography" - Tied for 1st - 2nd Place out of 418 Entries - 2018-Aug-27

Contest Winners - "Owls" - Finished 4th out of 191 entries - 2018-Dec-30

Contest Winners - "Those Stunning Eyes" - Finished 1st out of 262 entries - 2019-Jun-27:

Contest Winners - "Owls and Other Raptors" - 1st Place out of 850 entries - 2019-Oct-13

Uploaded

July 10th, 2014

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